Your Royal Hostage (12 page)

Major Pat, looking at her one more moment before dropping his eyes and fixing his tie, thought involuntarily what a thoroughly good girl — woman really —
Ione
was. In Major Pat's opinion,
Ione
was very much Colonel Q's daughter beneath that ladylike exterior; although thank God she didn't look like the terrifying old boy (Major Pat's former commanding officer). Nor did she collect guns: Major Pat still remembered certain evenings in the Mess centring round Colonel
Q's collection with an admiring
shudder
.

All the same,
Ione
had something of Colonel Q's
celebrated resourcefulness.

To put it another way, in the present crisis, thank God he had
Ione
aboard. Somewhere at the back of Major Pat's mind was another unspoken thought that he would probably end by marrying
Ione
one day, the Major being a widower with two increasingly recalcitrant teenage children.
Ione
would be good with them, God knew, given what she had been through with that pathetic drop-out sister of hers. Now
she
took after the late and disastrous Mrs Quentin. Lydia. Christ, would
she
have to live with them? ...

Oddly enough in the same fro
zen moment, Ione's own thoughts
had veered briefly,
as they often did, to Lydia Quentin, a.k.a.
Lamb. Lydia was staying out very late these days, nor had
Ione
, no fool, believed for one instant in the endle
ss stories of cinemas
with Janey, Melissa, Gaby and so on. Sadly,
Ione
knew too much
about her sister. Something more would have to be done about Lydia

The moment passed. Both the Major and
Ione
devoted themselves once more to the issue in hand.

Although the cameras had already been set up in the large Vienna Drawing-Room (so-called for its relics of the Congress, imported by some Austrian ancestress) the couple were still seated in Amy's delicately furnished blue sitting-room.

'I want to see them,' Princess Amy was saying mutinously, 'I want to see the photographs. Otherwise I won't talk to the Press. Not to these Americans, not to anyone. I don't care.' She stuck out her lower lip. Recent events had thinned her somewhat. She looked very pretty indeed in an Amy-blue dress with an enormous white sailor collar, the picture m
arred only by the expression on
her pouting face, somewhere between adult fury and girlish sulks. Prince Ferdinand rolled his eyes.

'Please darling, be reasonable,' he began. Then he burst out: 'You're being utterly childish.'

'I'm being childish, am I?' Amy's voice rose. 'And you're grown up, I suppose. And that ghastly woman, is she grown up too? Is that the point? Go on, say it.'

A footman entered, dressed in the discreet dark-green semi-uniform of the Palace, adapted long ago by the Duke from his regimental dress. He bowed his neck in the same discreet traditional fashion. 'Your Royal Highness, Mr Richard Vancy and Miss Jemima Shore have arrived and are in the Vienna Dra wing-Room.'

'Ma'am, do you not think it would be a good idea to join them?' suggested
Ione
in her agreeable, low voice.

Princess Amy looked at her; her expression was at its most Hanoverian, once again recalling her late father. Suddenly she stood up and gave a wide, ravishing smile. The sulky face was transformed, the pout totally vanished.

'Let's go then,' she said. 'On your heads be it.'

'And what is that supposed to mean, my love?' enquired the Prince in a voice of barely suppressed
ennui
as he rose to his feet. Major Pat thought that the Prince's sudden passionate wish to find himself a million miles away from this wayward girl, instead of being committed to marry her within weeks, was only too apparent.

'I was thinking of the threats made by those Animal Rights people,' replied Princess Amy, giving him a special smile, which was almost seraphic in its sweetness. 'That's all. Come along, darling.'

The Princess undoubtedly looked wonderful as she swayed out of the room on Ferdel's arm, although her high white heels hardly brought her up to her fiance's shoulder. At the same time,
Ione
, seeing that particular expression, that glint in the royal blue eyes, feared something, without knowing quite what it might be.

The royal couple entered the Vienna Drawing-Room, dominated by the huge early nineteenth
-century portrait of dancers at
some grand ball held at the Congress, just as Jemima had finished explaining patiently to Rick Vancy: 'I curtsey modestly off camera because I'm British, and you don't bow on or off camera.' She wanted to add: 'Because you're a genuine American republican democrat quite uninterested in the doings of British Royalty -which only leaves unclear what your television station is doing here in the first place.' Instead she added: 'I'll begin with "Your Royal Highnesses" leaving you to continue the interview with "Prince Ferdinand" or "Princess Amy". None of this makes you -or me for that matter - a courtier.'

'The picture I have is that we're all courtiers here,' Rick responded with something less than his usual urbanity.

'Trust me,' murmured the (American) producer of the show yearningly, as she had indeed been murmuring yearningly at intervals since the project of the interview was first discussed.

Then Rick visibly cheered up at the sight of Princess Amy whose enchanting friendly smile, no less than her nubile figure, filled him with sudden hopes of achieving the first really
truly
informal interview with British Royalty ... Fergie was not a precedent. Remember after all that the Duchess
of York, anoth
er lady with a nubile figure and an enchanting friendly smile, was not exactly Royalty to the palace born, having been actually born a commoner, a term which Susanna Blanding had recently dinned into his head. Unhesitatingly Rick Vancy dismissed from his mind all the many other really truly informal royal interviews: this and only this would be the one where the British Royals would be speaking as you have never heard them before, to coin the phrase that
tus
would undoubtedly be using to promote it. After all no royal couple that he'd ever heard of (not Prince Charles and Princess Diana - another 'commoner' in Susanna's
phrase; not Prince Andrew and Fe
rgie, well, not exactly) had been threatened with recent scandalous pictures of him and her, h
er in this case
being a naked film star
.
Under the circumstances Princess Amy 
had
to show herself yet more informal than anyone in the history of royal informality. As for Prince Ferdinand ...

As the Prince and Princess entered, Rick stood up. Jemima Shore gave her discreet curtsey
and Susanna Blanding a curtsey
which was both deeper and less graceful. To his discomfiture, Rick Vancy found himself instinctively starting to bend
a
knee with them: he compromised by giving a bow which was at least less ludicrous (and anyway the whole thing was off camera).

It was not until late on in the interview that the incident took place. By this time indeed the American producer was congratulating herself that the material would in fact need remarkably little editing before transmission, scheduled to be networked later that day in the States, making it an evening show in England.

Princess Amy gave vent to a series of unexceptional views on such matters as the family ('I love children, little children, I love my sisters' children, they're going to be our bridesmaids, I'm sure I'll love my children' - laughter - blush - 'our children'), and the man's position ('I love the idea of the man being the head of the family like they always have been, haven't they? It's traditional, isn't it? Although I'm also very very modern, aren't I, Ferdel?' Laughter, blush and even perhaps a slight pout). On being questioned about her new life in her fiance's country, however, she declared more positively: 'I'm not just going to stick in the country and be
a
cabbage, that would be utterly drear.' (Sweet sidelong look at Ferdel, but a hint of steel here, too, thought Jemima: it was the first indication she had had that there might be more to Princess Amy than this pretty piglet in her pretty blue dress with its ruffled white collar.)

Prince Ferdinand for his part declared himself, equally impeccably, as looking forward to introducing Amy to her new country. 'And you will make a very pretty cabbage, darling - ouch —' So Amy followed what was presumably a royal pinch with a royal kiss on the cheek. At the same time Ferdel also stressed his English ancestry, his English schooldays, his English tastes - 'This shirt is English,' he told Rick Vancy, having observed that Rick was wearing
a
shirt from the same shirt-maker in St James's. 'Except for the coronet. That is not English.'

Ferdel even remembered, as an afterthought and tribute to the programme's origins, to point out his many links with the United States, including a year at an American university. Currently there were what he pleasantly described as
'sporting and business links';
but neither Rick on behalf of
tus
nor the Prince himself, on his
own behalf, saw any reason to
give further prominence to what
these links might be; even if
in some publicly unacknowledged
way, they had been responsible for
the exclusive interview in the
first place. Amy. he felt, would cert
ainly enjoy the States with its
friendly people

It was left to Amy, extracting what was seen to be a sweet revenge for the cabbage episode, to exclaim: 'How fabulous! I'm
so
looking forward to seeing America! Now you've promised to take me, in front of all these cameras.' The cameras (in fact only two of them) recorded and the American producer passed Jemima a white card:
i.d. when and where visit
. But this the Prince smilingly declined to do.

Because matters had really gone so swimmingly, if not exactly excitingly, neither Rick, Jemima, the producer, nor, least of all Prince Ferdinand was prepared for Amy's sudden departure from the not-exactly-scripted, but not-exactly-not-scripted either, shape of the interview. Only
Ione
Quentin might perhaps have warned them that something was afoot. But
Ione
, seated at the back of the drawing-room with Susanna Blanding, had retreated to that ladylike obscurity which her office guaranteed for her on these occasions.

'Oh, but I do have lots of views of my own,' exclaimed Amy airily as Jemima was questioning her concerning her wardrobe.

'Princess Amy, would you say that you are highly clothes-conscious? Or do you more or less leave it to the designers?'

'For example I feel very strongly about animals and things like that,' continued Princess Amy, leaning forward slightly; she sounded a little more breathless perhaps than previously, and her blue eyes were wide open, otherwise there was nothing to indicate the totally unexpected nature of her response. 'And where clothes are concerned, I hate fur coats, don't you? I hate things like that. I think there ought to be a Fur Law, now how about that? People jolly well shouldn't be allowed to wear fur coats. And then there's experimenting on animals and horrid things like that, it shouldn't be allowed, should it? Now what about a law about that too? I mean, it's us who take all the pills and medicines and things like
that, not the poor animals, so why not experiment on us instead of -' Princess Amy's eyes roved round and in a moment of inspiration, fell upon Happy and Boobie, lying slumberi
ng magnificently on the Savonnerie
carpet in front of the fireplace. 'Instead of those poor old doggies.' Out of excitement or pity, Amy's voice broke. 'Too, too cruel,' she concluded.

About the same moment, another white card from the producer had reached Jemima's side of the table, with something similar in front of Rick,
keep going
read Jemima's card, continuing optimistically
this must be planned
. Rick's card read:
ask re
palace blood demo.

'Your Royal Highness,' began Rick excitedly, democracy thrown to the winds in the new and invigorating atmosphere of a scoop: 'Now regarding your very warm and human feelings concerning animal rights, there was, was there not, a demonstration not so long ago -'

But by this time, Prince Ferdinand, leaning f
orward, had picked up his fiancé
e's small white hand with its gleaming aquamarine ring, and was giving it a distinctly continental kiss: 'I love you for your compassion for all wild things,' said the Prince seriously. 'You will love your new country where there is so much work to be done in this direction.' His eyes met hers, a shot which subsequently fascinated all those who pored over it at
tus
later. Was it a look of princely command to which she responded? Was the whole thing set up to avoid the tiresome nuisance of those banned photographs marring the wedding? How had Prince Ferdel persuaded Princess Amy to do, in effect, his dirty work for him? Since the photographs involved him not her. All these questions remained unanswered at
tus.